US STATE DEPARTMENT TRAFFICKING REPORT A "MIXED BAG"
Washington -- According to Human Rights Watch, the US State Department's first annual report on trafficking in persons contains serious flaws.
The State Department released the 102-page report last week to comply with the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. It came five weeks after the congressionally mandated deadline of June 1, 2001.
The report evaluates the performance of 82 countries, putting each country in one of three categories depending on how its domestic efforts meet the legislation's minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. The law required reporting on all countries worldwide with a "significant number" of trafficking victims.
"The State Department's report is a real mixed bag," said LaShawn R. Jefferson, Acting Executive Director of the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. "We're glad the US government is finally paying close attention to this important human rights abuse. But the report has some major flaws that will need correcting the next time around."
One of the report's chief weaknesses, Jefferson said, was that it glosses over the problems of state complicity and corruption. Trafficking cannot flourish without the involvement of corrupt police, border guards, and state officials.
Human Rights Watch said the report also concentrates too much on trafficking for "sexual exploitation," to the exclusion of trafficking into other forms of forced labour, among them sweatshop labour, domestic servitude, and forced agricultural and construction work. Many of the country chapters fail to document whether governments have set up and funded programs to provide victims of trafficking with services.
"The report confirms what human rights activists and experts
on trafficking already know: that governments around the world treat victims of
trafficking as undocumented migrants, criminals, or both," said Jefferson.
"Governments should be offering protection
to these victims, not hitting them with prosecutions."
Human Rights Watch noted that Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Pakistan are accurately tiered to reflect their abysmal record on trafficking. However, missing from that list of Tier 3 countries are Moldova, Costa Rica, and Japan.
Human Rights Watch urged the State Department to ensure that
all future reports consistently include information about all forms of
trafficking in persons, not just trafficking for "sexual exploitation"; to
include the role of state complicity and corruption in facilitating trafficking
and government measures to identify, investigate, and prosecute state agents
involved in trafficking; to include reporting on human rights protections of
trafficking victims, in particular victims' access to legal counsel and other
services; and to include information on concrete measures governments are taking
to prosecute traffickers.
